


Words words words

by La Reine Noire (lareinenoire)



Category: Elizabethan and Jacobean Theatre & Literature RPF
Genre: Anachronisms, Crossdressing, Drunkenness, Gen, Pedantry, gratuitous Shakespeare references, look at these dorks, tw: period-accurate ableism - Freeform, tw: period-accurate racism - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 10:54:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8888116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lareinenoire/pseuds/La%20Reine%20Noire
Summary: Two playwrights walk into a tavern.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [liriaen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/liriaen/gifts).



> To my recipient: I was really hoping to incorporate two of your prompts into this fic, but it ended up more like 1.25, so I hope that's okay!
> 
> There are anachronisms in this fic. They are on purpose. Think of this as my homage to _Shakespeare in Love_ , a film I have loved for years. Also there are notes. Read them as you will. Thanks to my fabulous betas, W., G., and A. Thanks also to a PhD in English. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. ☺

_Methinks their ghosts come gaping for revenge,_   
_Whom I have slain in reaching for a Crown._   
_Clarence complains, and crieth for revenge._   
_My nephews' bloods, Revenge, revenge, doth cry._   
_The headless Peers come pressing for revenge._   
_And every one cries, let the tyrant die._

"...the Sun by day shines hotly for revenge, The moon by night eclipseth for revenge..."

 

"The stars," Will muttered to himself. _Next the stars. The planets_. But where to go from there?

 

"The birds sing not, but sorrow for revenge..." He watched as Richard III, his ill-got crown perched askew upon his head, paced back and forth across the inn's yard.

 

"The skreeking Raven sits croaking for revenge!"

 

It was a good line. There were a number of good lines.

 

"But to conclude--"

 

"Ay, conclude already," grumbled the man standing next to Will. "We get it!" he shouted. "Everybody bloody wants revenge on you!"

 

"I have deserved revenge," Richard said, shooting the culprit a withering glare. "In company I dare not trust my friend..."

 

Good lines. But not as good as the previous day's offering. The history was not one he knew--a Scythian shepherd who conquered Persia--but the lines had rolled over the actors’ tongues like rich Gascon wine. He’d cornered one of the actors in the pub afterward and had discovered that the playwright was a Cambridge man who lived in Norton Folgate and that he had written the play for a different company, the Lord Admiral’s Men.

 

It wasn’t that the _True Tragedy of Richard the Third_ was a bad play. It was an adequate play that had the misfortune of being performed after something extraordinary. And as he watched, Will found himself mentally twisting lines, weaving them together in the rhythms he’d heard on the previous day.

 

 _A Cambridge man in Norton Folgate who writes for the Admiral’s Men_.

 

Will had written scenes in the style of Seneca as exercises in school and his masters had praised his turns of phrase, but until the Queen’s Men arrived in Stratford on their tour, it had never occurred to him to write an entire play.

 

Richard III deserved better. And Will would oblige him.

 

***

 

**The Mermaid Tavern  
Cheapside  
Nine months later**

The prologue filled two full sheets of paper. Will stared at it and sighed. Depending on the actor, it could take fully half an hour, and nothing killed an audience’s attention like an endless speech. That much he had already seen.

 

"You don't mean to have your prologue recite the entire history of the century, do you?" Will looked over his shoulder to find Christopher Marlowe skimming the lines with a dubious expression.

 

The Mermaid Tavern had been Will’s first stop when he arrived in London, having remembered that the actor he’d cornered named it as the prime meeting place for actors and playwrights. Within several hours, he’d overheard a tall, well-formed man begin to recite a speech he instantly recognized from the tragedy of the Scythian shepherd. His name was Ned Alleyn, and the play--called _Tamburlaine the Great_ \--was Christopher Marlowe’s. Marlowe himself did not appear in the Mermaid until the following night, but he and Will promptly spent four hours and several tankards of ale in deep discussion of the Queen’s Men and their repertory.

 

Of course, Marlowe had since written two entire plays in the same time it had taken Will to produce a single painful speech.

 

"I thought,” Marlowe remarked, “that you intended to be better than the _True Tragedy_."

 

"It’s tedious in performance, but what else do you do?" He'd accidentally read the entirety of Hall's Chronicle when he'd intended to read only the chapter on Richard III. A mess of Edwards, Richards, and Henries. _Someone ought to remark on that_. "I have to explain it all somehow."

 

"Just not like that. I made Tom cut Don Andrea in the _Spanish Tragedy_ down by half and what was left was still too long. He'd originally planned for Don Andrea to be the hero."

 

"Andrea?" echoed Will, frowning. He’d now seen Tom Kyd’s _Spanish Tragedy_ no fewer than four times at two different theatres, each time enthralled by something different, but the dour Don Andrea was anything but enthralling. "Surely Hieronimo..."

 

"That's what I told him. He came round eventually."

 

"Hieronimo's is the tragedy," Will went on, "though I thought it was also Bellimperia's." The doomed heroine had too few lines for his liking.

 

"Tom got fed up and told me to write my own bloody play if I had so many opinions." Marlowe waved to the Mermaid's owner, who brought him a mug. "So I did."

 

"Which one?"

 

"It was meant to be _The Jew of Malta_ , but I got distracted halfway through the second act and wrote _Tamburlaine_ instead. He was more interesting, and a better character for Ned Alleyn, all told."

 

 _The Jew of Malta_ was one of the two plays Marlowe had completed during Will’s sojourn in London thus far. The other, a tragedy of Doctor Faustus, was still in rehearsal so far as he knew. "Well, if _you_ were writing a play about Richard III, where would you start?"

 

"Not with Richard, if that's what you're asking. He's the ending of the story." Marlowe settled himself on the bench beside Will. "Really, you ought to start with Richard II."

 

That had been Will's own glum conclusion on finishing Hall. And that Richard had his own problems.

 

"Richard II was deposed by his cousin and murdered," Will said, rolling his eyes. "The Master of the Revels would love that."

 

"So was Henry VI."

 

"Not formally deposed, no," Will protested. "You know as well as I that there's a difference. As for the murder, I'm not sure how Master Tilney feels about regicide." The Master of the Revels had already forbade both the Admiral’s Men and another company, Lord Strange’s Players, from performing within the city of London, which had sent them fleeing first to the Theatre and now to the Rose in Southwark.

 

"If you can't kill a king in a playhouse, of what use is the playhouse?" Marlowe asked. The pause after the question was, to Will's mind, unnecessarily long. _He's spent too much time around Ned Alleyn_. "All the good plays kill kings."

 

"What is the theatre but sad stories of the death of kings?" Will replied without thinking.

 

A quick glance in Marlowe's direction revealed that the Cambridge man was laughing. "That's good. Not quite blank verse, but it is a different talent altogether to spin rhymes _ad extempore_. Any tragedy worth performing kills the king. Her Majesty knows her Seneca well enough to understand that, and Master Tilney would be out of a job if he forbade regicide altogether."

 

But Will was barely listening. There had been something of the Roman in the history he'd read of Richard III, a sense of justice not divine but primal and dangerous. And in his mind's eye he saw it--the House of York as the house of Atreus, cursed for having murdered an anointed king, harbouring a viper at its very heart that would one day rise to destroy them all. But Lancaster was no less guilty. Henry IV had murdered Richard II in the dungeons of Pontefract Castle. To say nothing of Henry VI's ferocious queen, who rejoiced when the bloody Lord Clifford brought Richard of York's head to her, crowned with paper.

 

"Master Shakespeare?" Marlowe was looking at him in puzzlement. "Or should I leave you to your pondering?"

 

Will grabbed his arm. "It starts with Margaret."

 

Marlowe blinked. A smile tugged at his lips. "Comedies end with weddings. Tragedies begin with them."

 

"A marriage treaty for which England would pay most dearly..." Will dug in his bag and pulled out several half-scribbled sheets of paper along with his writing-case. "Don't go yet, Marlowe."

 

"Not for the world. I'm enjoying this." Marlowe motioned the tavern keeper for another ale and fished the long, thin tobacco pipe out of his doublet. "Do you mind?"

 

Will scarcely noticed. He pulled out his pile of scrap paper and began to write.

 

***

 

He spent the next six days at the Mermaid, page after page spilling out of his brain as though a dam had burst. At the end of the second day, he handed Marlowe a pile of papers. "Act One."

 

Marlowe raised his eyebrows. "Does the play have a name?"

 

“Not yet."

 

"Very well." Marlowe resettled himself more comfortably in his chair. "I'll just call it the Civil Wars for now. I don't think Lucan would mind."

 

"Even if he disapproved, what would he do?" Will mused. "Visit me in my sleep like Baldwin and his ghosts?"

 

"At least he'd get better poetry from you than he did from Baldwin." Marlowe gestured toward the door. "Now go write Act Two. I'll let you know what I think."

 

Will was already out the door.

 

***

 

Several hours later, he was back. "Something's missing, isn't it?" he asked, gesturing at the papers sitting in a neat pile in front of Marlowe. "I thought so, but I didn't know what."

 

"I agree," said Marlowe after a moment. "Sit."

 

Will obeyed without thinking as Mister Johnson set a mug of ale in front of him. "There's no reason for Margaret to behave the way she does. She's just a girl." He took a sip and closed his eyes to enjoy the flavour.

 

"Is she, though?" asked Marlowe. "What do the books say?"

 

"Nothing useful," said Will, flapping one hand dejectedly in the air. "Woman with the heart of a man, better battle commander than her husband, struck terror into the hearts of the foe, etcetera. Although I like the story of Bloody Clifford presenting her with the Duke of York's head crowned with paper."

 

"It would stage well."

 

"It would." Will took another, more generous, drink of ale. "Holinshed writes that there's another story." At Marlowe's look, he continued. "That Clifford crowned York with paper whilst he lived, taunted him like Christ on the cross, before striking off his head and presenting it to his queen."

 

"That would also stage well." Marlowe paused. "But it would be better if Margaret were there too."

 

Will glanced up at him. " _She_ taunts him.” He saw the stage at the Rose in his mind’s eye, young Johnny Vernor in armour over his gown, laughing at Ned Alleyn as York. “Is this the man who would be England's king?"

 

"Who preached so highly of his royal blood--"

 

"And he curses her in return. For his death, and for his son, Rutland. A schoolboy." Will could imagine it as he spoke. "Hall says he was but twelve when Clifford cut him down. And this selfsame curse flies back and forth between York and Lancaster until..." he grinned. "Until Richard."

 

"You have plans for him."

 

"If you can enthral a crowd with an infidel emperor, perhaps I could do it with a crookbacked king."

 

"Ned will never wear a crookback," Marlowe said with a shrug. "You may wish to find a different leading man."

 

"I'll worry about him when I get to him." Will studied the opening of the scene, wrinkling his nose as he did so. "I still need to decide what to do with Margaret."

 

"They'll love to hate her."

 

"That they will, but think you I could make them pity her?" Will plucked up one of the pages and skimmed the lines. "What if there was a reason for Margaret to seek power? What if she thought she was in danger?"

 

"York?" It was tempting, certainly, and an easy alteration. Just a few added lines before York's speech and it would be done. And yet. "No. Not York. Another woman."

 

"York has a Duchess," Marlowe supplied. "Yon crookback's mother."

 

"I think I know who it is. Baldwin's ghosts, remember?" Will snatched back the pages and found Humphrey of Gloucester's first speech. "Gloucester's wife consorted with witches. She did penance along Fleet Street. Hall thought it was part of a great conspiracy to bring down her husband masterminded by his uncle the Bishop of Winchester."

 

"Witches, plotting bishops, and Queen Margaret? Are you certain you can fit all of this into a single play?"

 

"We'll worry about that later. I need to write the fall of Elinor of Gloucester." Will jumped to his feet. “I’ll return anon, Marlowe.”

 

“Take your time. Oh, and Will?”

 

Will glanced back at him.

 

“Call me Kit.”

 

***

 

This time, when Kit gave him back his pages, he was grinning. “You were right about Dame Elinor. Suffolk too.”

 

Hall had not gone so far as to claim Queen Margaret had taken the Earl--later Duke--of Suffolk as her lover, but the hints had been palpable, and Will acted upon them. An adulterous Frenchwoman continually frustrated by her weakling husband and his court of conniving lords, Margaret protected Suffolk while he plotted the destruction of Dame Elinor and the murder of her husband, Good Duke Humphrey.

 

“I do have one piece of bad news,” Kit continued. “I don’t think you can fit everything into a single play.”

 

Will sank into the chair across from Kit. “I was worried you’d say that.”

 

“Not all stories fit into one play.”

 

“True. Tamburlaine’s didn’t.” One of the first plays Will had seen in London was _2 Tamburlaine_ , which had not yet made it to the touring companies. “One play about his rise to power and the other about his fall.”

 

“Just so,” said Kit, nodding. “Have you decided what to do with Jack Cade yet?”

 

“If I’m writing two plays instead of one, I have more time.” Will rested his chin on his hands. “I can stage Suffolk’s murder beforehand.”

 

“A good comeuppance to have one’s head struck off by a pirate.”

 

“Everything’s better with pirates,” Will murmured. “And Cade’s rebellion will give the clowns something to do.”

 

“Just tell Attewell when he enters and when he dies,” Kit advised. “Don’t bother giving him lines. He’ll just ignore them.” Though he said nothing more on the subject, Will recalled _Tamburlaine_ ’s prologue with its scornful line about jigging clowns and drew his own conclusions.

 

On advice not just from Kit but also from a bricklayer-turned-actor who had overheard one of their discussions, Will gave up the entirety of Act Four to Cade’s Rebellion and returned to the squabbling nobles in the final act. _Let the audience have their clowns_ , Ben Jonson had opined with a shrug, _and you can keep them for the rest of the play_.

 

“He’s not wrong,” Kit said afterward. “Jonson was meant to study in Cambridge, but his stepfather has him building walls in Lincoln’s Inn instead. A waste of a good mind.”

 

“I thought he said he was going for a soldier.”

 

“It’s a living,” Kit allowed. “No doubt he’s doing it for the pension so he can write plays after.”

 

“If he survives.” Even in Stratford they had heard about the awful death of the great poet Sir Philip Sidney fighting the Spaniards in the Netherlands.

 

After a few moments of pained contemplation, Kit remarked, “I had an idea. You’ll need to rewrite Act Two just a little, but I think it will work.”

 

He had been revising _Doctor Faustus_ , which explained where the idea originated.

 

“You want me to conjure a devil onstage?” Will asked, shooting him a sideways glance. “And you think me likely to get away with it?”

 

“Not you. Roger Bolingbroke and the Witch of Eye conjure a devil onstage and his prophecies all come true...turned awry.” Kit pointed at the several pages Will had written of Act Five. “There’s a story about the Duke of Somerset being advised to shun castles and dying beneath an alehouse sign for the Castle Tavern. Do you really think you can resist that?”

 

In the end, there were three true-false prophecies writ down and presented to the Duke of Suffolk when he arrested the Lady Elinor, and Will was able to finish Act Five before sitting on tenterhooks for fully half the day while Kit took the play to Philip Henslowe at the Rose.

 

When Kit returned that evening, he was grinning widely. “The Admiral’s Men will speak your play, Will Shakespeare. I suggest you think of a title by Michelmas, else Henslowe will provide you with one.”

 

They drank deep that evening to celebrate, which left Will nursing a headache the next morning as he tried to think about titles. _The Tragedy of Gloucester_? That wouldn’t work, for Gloucester died in Act Three. _The Tragedy of Margaret?_ Tempting, but Margaret’s tale had not yet become tragic.

 

He wrote out _The Civil Wars_ below his most recent crossed-out attempt and frowned at it.

 

“Master Shakespeare?”

 

Will spun round and saw a small man with a neatly trimmed beard watching him hesitantly. His doublet was worn, but of good cloth, and his gloves--unlike Kit’s, which made Will wince every time he glanced at them--would have met John Shakespeare’s exacting standards.

 

“I hear you have finished your play of York and Lancaster,” said the man. “May I offer my good wishes?”

 

“Thank you, sir.”

 

“Samuel Daniel at your service. It is not an easy subject.”

 

“No, it isn’t,” Will agreed with an uneasy laugh. “I’m already writing more plays than I’d planned. It was supposed to be one play about Richard III and as of now, he hasn’t even appeared.”

 

He motioned for Daniel to sit down, but the other man hesitated. “I have an impertinent question, Master Shakespeare, if you will indulge me.”

 

“Of course.”

 

“Could you...call your play something other than _The Civil Wars_?”

 

"Is there something wrong with the title?"

 

"No. I mean, it's a good title. But, you see, I was hoping to use that title." At what must have been Will's expression he shook his head. "Oh, not for a play. I don't write plays. Never. It's a poem. After Lucan."

 

Lucan, again. He should ask to borrow Kit's translation to jog his memory. "I suppose it's not a good title for a play either. It's better for a poem."

 

Daniel grinned shyly. "I think so."

 

Later, when Kit returned to the Mermaid, Will told him what had transpired. “Poor Daniel,” Kit said, shaking his head. “Ever since Tom Newman printed his sonnets without permission earlier this year, he’s lived in terror of losing his work to others.”

 

“Printed his sonnets without permission?” echoed Will.

 

“Newman got his hands on some papers belonging to the Countess of Pembroke and, having more courage than sense, decided to print all the verses under the late Sir Philip’s name to stir up sales.” Kit picked up Will’s list of abandoned titles. “The Countess was not best pleased.”

 

“What did she do?”

 

“Suppressed the book, as best she could. Daniel would have his verses printed properly under his own name, but the man can’t take two steps without revising the first, so who knows when they will see the light of day. Speaking of, have you found a title yet?”

 

“I haven’t. But I think Daniel’s right to advise against _The Civil Wars_. All you Cambridge men will expect to see Julius Caesar and be disappointed.”

 

“You can leave it to Henslowe if you want,” advised Kit. “The title won’t be pretty, but he knows how to draw a crowd.”

 

“Then I will leave it to him.”

 

***

 

Henslowe was as good as Kit’s word. Having been told there was a sequel forthcoming, playbills posted all over Cheapside advertised _The First Part of the Contention Betwixt the Houses of York and Lancaster_ with several additional details about Gloucester’s murder and the Duke of York’s conspiracy.

 

As opening day drew nearer, Will began to write the second part. One of the scattered scenes he’d already finished but set aside was the fall of Richard of York and his dying curse upon Queen Margaret. Another was just one speech intended for the young, bloody-minded Richard of Gloucester. _I can smile, and murder whilst I smile_.

 

It was only when he watched, mouth agape, as Ned Alleyn thundered York’s lines and Johnny Vernor swept across the stage as Margaret that Will understood what he needed to do. He went back to his rooms and wrote furiously for the rest of the night and shoved the pages into Kit’s hands the next morning.

 

“It might be trash.”

 

Kit handed them back that evening. “It couldn’t be further from trash. Also, Henslowe made a killing last night. He wants your new pages by the end of the month.”

 

“Jesu preserve me. It took me the better part of a year to write the first play.”

 

“Welcome to the theatre business.”

 

***

 

Through the unholy conjunction of Kit Marlowe and large quantities of sack, Will managed to produce Henslowe’s desired pages. Lord Strange’s Men had joined the Admiral’s Men at the Rose by now, but Kit had been right that Ned Alleyn flatly refused to play a crookback and chose instead to reprise his role as Richard of York before realizing that York died at the end of Act One. It was one of the younger actors, whose father owned the Theatre in Shoreditch, who took up the role of Gloucester, crookback and all.

 

Within a week of the play’s opening, young Richard Burbage had guaranteed himself a place in Lord Strange’s Men so long as the company endured. He had also been invited to entertain no fewer than five different ladies from the audience, all of whom insisted that he come to them _as_ Richard of Gloucester.

 

“Who knew,” Will observed to Kit, “that women would be charmed by a murderous crookback?”

 

“And you still haven’t written your play about him,” said Tom Kyd from Kit’s other side. They were now sharing lodgings at the pleasure of their new patron Lord Strange, and Will found himself spending almost as much time in their cramped, book-strewn rooms as he did at the Mermaid. “Is Henslowe demanding that yet?”

 

“No, he wants a play about the French wars first. The death of famed Lord Talbot and the beginnings of the quarrel between Good Duke Humphrey and the Cardinal of Winchester.”

 

“Which is to say,” Kit interrupted, “that Ned Alleyn chafes at the ascendancy of young Burbage and needs a reminder that _he_ is the star in the Admiral’s Men’s firmament.”

 

“And now that Henslowe has Lord Strange’s Men and the Admiral’s Men resident in his theatre, he’ll demand three plays apiece from everyone.” Tom shook his head with a grimace. “My Danish tragedy will be forgotten amidst these civil broils.”

 

“Your Danish tragedy can’t be forgotten until you finish writing it,” Kit reminded him. “Alas for poor Prince Hamlet. But you will always be the man who wrote the _Spanish Tragedy_ , for what it’s worth.”

 

“Ay, as much as anyone pays attention to the writer. For all the groundlings know, Ned Alleyn writes his own lines.”

 

“Fame is a fickle mistress,” Kit pronounced, “but we have coin instead.” He turned to Will. “The French wars, is it?”

 

“Yes. And, Kit,” Will added, “I had a proposition for you.”

 

“Propose away.”

 

“I will be plain with you. The York and Lancaster plays would not have been written without you, and it would be my honour and pleasure if you would write this one with me.”

 

For a moment, Kit studied him. “Joan La Pucelle.”

 

“What? But she died twenty years before Talbot.”

 

“The groundlings don’t care, and nor does Henslowe.” Kit blew a ring of smoke toward the ceiling. “If you let me write Joan La Pucelle, I will be your fellow author on this play of the French wars.”

 

“Done.”

 

***

 

As was often the case, Ned Alleyn got precisely what he wanted, as did Philip Henslowe. _Henry the Sixth, with the death of Lord Talbot and the conjurations of the French Pucelle_ sold out its entire initial run of performances, and Henslowe immediately planned an additional run alternating with Kyd’s _Spanish Tragedy_.

 

From their perch near the open scaffold early in the run, Kit pointed out a scruffy-looking man standing some ten feet from the stage. “Thomas Nashe. He’s been here four times now.”

 

Nearly a year to the day after Will had given Henslowe his first completed play, he found Kit in the Mermaid frowning down at a pamphlet. “What’s the matter?”

 

“Bile from a dead man,” replied Kit. “Robert Greene’s final opus does not, to my mind, contain even a groat’s worth of wit.” He raised one eyebrow as he looked at Will. “He mentions you.”

 

“What? Why?”

 

“‘An upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tyger’s heart wrapt in Players’ hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you: and being an absolute _Johannes fac totum_ is in his own conceit, the only Shake-scene in a country’.” By the end of his recitation, Kit was smiling. “Far be it from me to speak ill of the dead, but I think he was jealous.”

 

“Robert Greene jealous of me?”

 

“You’re a better poet than he ever was. His blank verse scarce deserved the name.”

 

“Now you’re just being petty, Kit,” remarked the man standing behind Kit. “I think you’d say that about anyone who isn’t you.”

 

“And Will. He understands how it works.” Kit waved one hand in the man’s direction. “Master Drayton, this is Master Shakespeare. You know not his name but you know his verse, I guarantee it. The York and Lancaster plays.”

 

“Yours, sir?” Drayton looked Will up and down. “I had thought those were Kit’s. Did I not see you perusing Holinshed some months back at the bookseller?”

 

“Only in an advisory capacity,” replied Kit. “In exchange, Master Shakespeare has offered to lend a similar eye to the play I’ve nearly finished.”

 

“Which is?”

 

“A tragedy of Edward II.”

 

Will’s mouth dropped open. “With the deposition?”

 

“And the poker.”

 

Drayton nearly choked on his ale. “God a’mercy, Marlowe, are you mad? Tilney will never allow it.”

 

“Tilney can’t control what plays are heard outside London’s walls,” said Kit airily. “Besides, he allowed _The Massacre at Paris_.”

 

“There’s no comparison--”

 

“Then I’ll write another after, one that will offend no one but Catholics.”

 

“Do you have a subject in mind?” asked Will.

 

“Are you familiar with Pope Alexander Sextus?” At Will’s puzzled frown, he grinned. “He had a son who, but for the vagaries of Fortune, may have ruled all of Italy.”

 

Now both Drayton and Will were staring at Kit.

 

“I mean to call it _The Tragedy of Valentino_. My intent is that it shall be another _Tamburlaine_.”

 

For the next hour, they listened as Kit regaled them with the tumultuous life of one Cesare Borgia--a liar, a cheat, a murderer, and a defrocked cardinal. “And, of course, there’s the matter of his sister.” At that, he gave Will a pointed look. “The fair Lucretia, whose nature belies her name. They said she was the most beautiful woman in Italy, and a scandal in the papal court. Thrice married, her first husband divorced on charges of impotence--never mind that she’d had a child out of wedlock with a stableboy--and her second murdered by her brother in their very bedchamber before she married the Duke of Ferrara and became Pietro Bembo’s muse.”

 

“She would put Bellimperia to shame,” breathed Will.

 

“I won’t tell Tom you said that.”

 

Will was half out of his chair already. “Write you Valentino’s tragedy, Kit, and I shall make them weep for Lucretia.”

 

“Not till I murder Edward II.”

 

***

 

Kit’s play of Edward II had two weeks of rehearsal left before the Master of the Revels ordered all the public theatres closed for fear of the plague. Henslowe despaired of his revenues while both the Admiral’s Men and Lord Strange’s Men decided to go on tour to make up their losses, taking Kit’s play, _The Spanish Tragedy_ , and the three parts of York and Lancaster with them.

 

“Perhaps,” remarked Michael Drayton from across the table at the Mermaid, “Tilney heard about the poker and this is his revenge.”

 

Kit glared at him. “The playhouses won’t be closed forever. The people would riot.”

 

“At least this gives me time to write,” Will pointed out. “I have two acts of _The Duchess of Naples_ , and even those are scarcely half-written.” He was, admittedly, proud of the dialogue between Lucretia and her father the Pope’s mistress, the beautiful Julia, where they spoke of men’s jealousy. “I don’t entirely mind.”

 

“What of Richard?”

 

“Henslowe told me to wait until the York and Lancaster plays have been in repertory for at least a year. Besides,” Will said with a shrug, “I want my _Duchess_ alongside your _Valentino_.”

 

Kit raised his mug in Will’s direction. “And so it shall be.”

 

The weeks crawled by, chilly and windswept, as Lent came and went. After Easter, the skies cleared and slowly London returned to normal.

 

Then Tom Kyd was arrested.

 

Will found Kit nursing a cup of sack and glowering into the fireplace. “It was his books. His bloody books. I told him he needed to hide them better.”

 

“Do you need to leave London?” Kit had always been more outspoken than Tom even on the best of days.

 

Kit shook his head. “Not until I know what they’ve done to him and what he said.”

 

“Torture?”

 

“I fear me, yes. The Privy Council is many things but merciful is not one of them.” Kit stretched his legs and took another drink. “You should keep out of the way for the nonce, Will. Don’t be seen with me until all this has faded away.”

 

“Are you sure?”

 

Kit waved one hand. “It’s for the best. You’ve a wife and children, Will. You can’t afford this madness.”

 

Will held out his hand and Kit grasped it briefly. “Good fortune, Kit,” said Will. “I look forward to reading your _Valentino_.”

 

“And I your _Duchess_. Farewell.”

 

It was the last time he saw Kit Marlowe alive.

 

***

 

They said it was a quarrel over the reckoning. Three men arguing in a dingy tavern in Deptford that ended with a knife in Kit’s eye.

 

Tom Kyd emerged from prison, grey-faced and gaunt, his eyes naught but dark hollows that spoke of horrors Will could only imagine. _I said what they wanted me to say. I only wanted them to stop_.

 

Of the _Valentino_ pages, no trace remained. There had been scraps of paper in the hearth near where Kit had been stabbed, but none knew what they were. Will set the handful of scenes from the _Duchess_ aside, and to Tom’s unasked question, he replied, “There is no _Duchess_ without _Valentino_. Perhaps these can live again in some other tale under other names.”

 

Tom nodded. “But you will keep writing, won’t you?”

 

“I don’t think I could do otherwise. Not now.” Will bowed his head for a moment, then raised his glass. "To all the plays Kit Marlowe might have written. May we who are left live up to his promise.”

 

“Hear, hear,” said Drayton, who had sat down beside Will. “And to your _Richard_ , Will. You know he’d never forgive you if you didn’t write it.”

 

“He’d haunt you,” supplied Tom with a grim smile. “A right bastard of a ghost he’d be too.”

 

“Of course I’ll finish it.” _A haunted play, ringing with curses. A tyrant brought down, but to what end?_ A line flitted through his mind then. “Let’s to’t pell-mell, if not to heaven, then hand-in-hand to hell.”

 

It was, he supposed, a sentiment Kit would have appreciated. And that would need to be enough.

**Author's Note:**

> If you've been following the early modern news circuit (and if you're reading this fic, odds are you do), you might have heard about the newly fashionable theory that the three parts of Henry VI were the collaborative effort of Shakespeare and Marlowe. My main issue with this theory hinges on the definition of the word 'collaboration', which we as fan authors know can mean so many different things.
> 
> This fic operates on the assumption that the Marlowe-Shakespeare collaboration on the three parts of Henry VI worked more or less like a collaboration between fan authors, where Marlowe was the beta-reader on Parts 2 and 3 and a co-author on the prequel, Part 1, where his primary contribution was the Joan of Arc storyline. Shakespeare then wrote Richard III on his own shortly after Marlowe's murder. That assumption is mine and is not based on extant scholarship.
> 
> Because we know little about William Shakespeare's early years as a playwright and only slightly more about Christopher Marlowe's unfortunately short career, there is a lot of speculation in this fic. Where possible, I have deferred to what little primary evidence is readily available. A lot of the important academic work on the topic is, sadly, in paywalled journals and therefore more difficult to come by, so I’ve had to rely on my own notes, many of which are several years out of date.
> 
> A few of my sources are below:
> 
> [ Early English Books Online](http://eebo.chadwyck.com)  
>    
> [The Diary of Philip Henslowe](http://www.henslowe-alleyn.org.uk/essays/henslowediary.html)
> 
> [The Map of Early Modern London](https://mapoflondon.uvic.ca)
> 
> [A Transcript of the Register of the Company of Stationers of London](https://archive.org/details/transcriptofregi01statuoft)
> 
> Barbara Kreps, "Bad Memories of Margaret? Memorial Reconstruction versus Revision in _The First Part of the Contention_ and _2 Henry VI_ ," _Shakespeare Quarterly_ 51.2 (2000): 154-80.
> 
> Anonymous, [_The True Tragedy of Richard the Third_](http://www.elizabethanauthors.org/truetragedy01.htm)
> 
> Thomas Kyd, [_The Spanish Tragedy_](http://www.luminarium.org/renascence-editions/kyd1.html)
> 
> William Baldwin &c, _A Mirror for Magistrates_ (1559, 1563, 1578, etc)
> 
> Edward Hall, _The Union of the Two Noble & Illustre Houses of Yorke & Lancastre_ (1548)
> 
> Raphael Holinshed, _The Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland_ (1577, 1587)
> 
> I have also participated in the long and storied tradition of adding apocryphal plays to the Shakespearean and Marlovian canons. There's a reason people do it. It's fun. _The Tragedy of Valentino_ and _The Duchess of Naples_ are my own creation, loosely based, in turn, on Marlowe's _Tamburlaine Part I_ and John Webster's _The Duchess of Malfi_ (with a few nods to _Othello_ ). There is a surviving early modern play about the Borgia family and it is hilarious--Barnabe Barnes' [_The Devil's Charter_](https://archive.org/details/devilscharter00barngoog), printed in 1607.
> 
> Francesco Guicciardini's history of Italy (Barnes' primary source) had been translated into English in 1579 by Thomas Fenton, so it would have been available to both Shakespeare and Marlowe in the early 1590s.


End file.
